2 Peter 1:5-7: Love Comes In Last

For this very reason, make every effort to add to your faith goodness; and to goodness, knowledge; and to knowledge, self-control; and to self-control, perseverance; and to perseverance, godliness; and to godliness, mutual affection; and to mutual affection, love.

2 Peter 1:5-7 (NIV)

Love Comes In Last

Peter tells people who already have everything they need for a godly life to make every effort anyway. They add goodness to faith, knowledge to goodness, and so on up the line, and the last thing they add is love.

In the reading room on the second floor, a kid has gone under. He’s face down on a spread of open books with his hood up, and his highlighter has rolled to the lip of the table. Two chairs over, a woman working a crossword moves it back before it goes off the edge. It’s three in the afternoon and the light through the tall window is the color of weak tea.

God has already supplied what a godly life takes, and Peter builds everything he asks for on top of that. On what’s been given, a person adds goodness, then knowledge, then self-control, then perseverance, then godliness, then affection, and then love.

That order costs. The affection is built on self-control, and love stands at the end of the list, after the not quitting.

The kid asleep on his books is in the part with no view. There’s a sandwich crust in the top of his bag and a phone face down by his elbow, and nothing on that table looks like love from any angle. Peter puts love at the far end of the list anyway, after the goodness and the self-control and the not quitting.

He surfaces at ten past four with a line pressed into his cheek and doesn’t move any of the books for a while. Two chairs down, the woman folds her paper along the crease and says, “Exam tomorrow?” He tells her it’s in November.